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Alright ladies, summer is coming and it’s time to get rid of those unwanted winter pounds. In my opinion the best way to get ready for a diet is to analyze your current food habits and intake. It’s time to get an idea of exactly what you have been doing up to this point by figuring out your caloric, fat, carbohydrate, protein and fluid intake. The best way to do this would be need to keep track of everything that you eat or drink for one week. You can make a spreadsheet and use a food count book or use one of the many websites where you put in what you have eaten and it does the work for you. The key is to be specific not only with what you are eating but portion size and time of day. After a week look at the numbers and types of food, this will give you a starting point, you now have an idea of what you need to change.

While assessing your current eating habits you need to look at a few things:



What kinds of food am I eating? A lot of women don’t eat that much throughout the day but what they do eat is generally made up of mostly carbohydrates consisting of starches and sugars. Look at the number of carbohydrate grams you eat per day and determine if these are simple or complex carbohydrates this way you can adjust accordingly. It is more than likely that you will not only need to drop the number of carbohydrates per day but almost completely get rid of the simple carbohydrates and make sure that you get in the right amount of complex carbohydrates. It’s a fine line between eating enough carbohydrates in order to function and eating too many so that they end up being stored in fat cells. Timing is also an important factor in carbohydrate consumption.

Another major issue for many is getting in enough protein. Depending on the amount of weight you are wanting to lose a rule of thumb is that you need to get in 1 gram of protein per day in order to encourage fat loss while maintaining muscle mass. Depending on the amount of muscle mass that you have some may need a little less, some a bit more. Many women find this to be a problem but if you get in a protein source through 5 to 6 meals per day you should be able to meet this goal. The first time around I found that by keeping track of my protein intake throughout the day was the only way I could manage to get it all in. If by my fourth meal I was running short of goal I knew I was going to have to either eat some extra protein with my remaining meals or throw in an extra meal.



Fats – are you eating too many and are they mostly the saturated kinds that tend to store? We need a little fat in our diet for many reasons. A no fat diet for a prolonged period of time will not only stall out any weight loss but have health repercussions as well. The key is to make sure you are using the right kinds of fat. Unsaturated and essential fatty acids aid in weight loss not hinder it as long as you adhere to the number that your body needs and don’t go over that.

Calories – It’s amazing how quickly they add up. Once you get an idea of how many on average you have been getting per day you can figure out what you need to cut back to in order to lose weight. Finally we come to water – Most people forget to track this but fluid intake is extremely important. If you’re wanting to lose some weight then it’s time to cut out the soda and juices but make sure you still get in plenty of water.